31/03/2020 - Governance

KEY POINTS

·         A clear parallel exists  between the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change is becoming apparent. Both feature emergence, path dependence, feedback loops, tipping points, and nonlinearity.

·         And, importantly, both highlight the need for much closer, forward-looking international cooperation to manage global threats.

·         Indeed, a demand for greater global cooperation is the second and more significant political trend that could emerge from the current crisis.

·         While this might at first sound inconsistent with heightened suspicion of globalization, the necessary reforms can in fact synthesize both trends.

·         Pandemic prevention and containment is a global public good, and providing it requires increased global coordination as well as adaptive, temporary, and coordinated decoupling.

·         These mechanisms will be most effective if they are clear, transparent, designed in advance, and embedded in a global governance system that legitimizes and continuously updates them.

·         For example, governments could craft and adopt common protocols for temporary travel and trade restrictions in the event of a potential pandemic, supported by globally agreed-upon early-warning systems and thresholds for action.

·         In addition, the international community may wish to build functional redundancy into complex systems—including finance, value chains, food supply, and public health—in order to prevent central hubs from becoming choke points and to ensure that single failures do not cascade into systemic collapse.

·         Although this would entail some reshoring and deconcentration at the expense of efficiency, economies of scale, and comparative advantage, but rather risk reduction through diversification.

·         Humanity must organize itself to mitigate the tail risks associated with climate change, pandemics, bioterror, and unmanaged artificial intelligence.